Bear Forces Its Way Into Canton Woman's Home Monday. Police Say It's The 4th Such Break-In The Last Two Weeks

A Canton woman called police to report that a bear walked into her bedroom and pushed over her dresser while she was lying in bed Monday morning.

The woman closed the door and waited until police responded to the East Hill Road residence, according to records of the call made to a police dispatcher.

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Canton officers arrived and fired shots at the bear to scare it off, said Chris Collibee, a spokesman for the state Department of Energy & Environmental Protection. The bear, which was not struck, went into the nearby woods.

Police say bears have entered houses in Canton four times in the past two weeks — one visiting the same house twice in one day.

“This will continue to happen as we have no means to control the bear population in Connecticut,” Collibee said.

No one has been injured in the incidents. At least two different bears broke screens and storm doors and trashed kitchens, Sgt. Derek Messier said. One is a large, male bear with no tags, weighing 350-400 pounds. The other is smaller with two tags, one on each ear.

“It’s becoming a bigger issue, particularly this year,” Messier said.

All of the bear breakins happened in the southern half of town, surprisingly far from the sprawling McLean Game Refuge in Granby, Simsbury and Canton. The bears appear to be in search of food, police said.

The bear that broke into the East Hill Road house Monday ended up in the kitchen, Messier said. Standing on its hind legs, it opened cabinets in search of food.

“He was in here, and then he went out,” the resident told the 911 dispatcher as she lay in bed.

The recent string of bear burglaries started last month:

-- On July 26, a large male bear with no tags entered a house on West Mountain Road by breaking the screen of an open window while a woman was in the kitchen. The resident barricaded herself in a bedroom, Messier said.

-- On Aug. 2, a smaller bear tried to get into an East Street home through its breezeway. A resident was able to scare it off, Messier said. The bear had been tagged twice.

-- Later that afternoon on Morgan Road, a resident came home to find a bear had broken down a locked storm door, went into the kitchen and helped itself to food. About two hours later, the bear returned, Messier said.

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By then, the homeowner had built a barricade to keep it out, he said.

In May, a bear tore up the inside of a Subaru Outback on Andrew Drive.